After Sarkeesian, a critic, attacked video games' treatment of women, she tweeted that, "Some very scary threats have just been made against me and my family. Contacting authorities now." She said she was forced to leave her home.

While there is no confirmation of her claim, this would not be the first time that there has been a fierce backlash to criticism of the rampant sexism in some video games.

The tech industry as a whole has been under fire for its treatment of women, of course, but its products generally don't demean women. That is not true about the video game industry, whose offerings often feature skimpily clad women with oddly proportioned body parts playing mostly secondary roles.

A female character from the popular "BioShock Infinite" game that came out in 2013. (Courtesy of 2K Games)

But the industry's image is in conflict with a changing reality. More adult women are playing than adolescent males, according to a recent report from the Entertainment Software Association, and women of all ages make up nearly half of the gaming population.

True, it may be that women are playing more mobile games like "Candy Crush Saga" than console games like the "Grand Theft Auto" series. But mobile is the growing part of the industry.

And, in a sign of the increasing mainstream embrace of video games, Amazon is paying nearly $1 billion for Twitch, a video network devoted to gaming that has been compared to ESPN.

Still, much of the industry caters to boys and young men, providing territory safe from political correctness where gratuitous violence and sex is just part of the game.

Advertisement

In fact, over the past 15 years of so, the treatment of women in video games hasn't changed much, said Edward Downs, a media effects scholar at the University of Minnesota.

"You do get to play as a female protagonist once in awhile," he said. But "females are in large part secondary characters, or something in the background, not active playable protagonists."

Industry executives believe "it is the male demographic they need to go after," said Gabriela Richard, a gamer and professor at the University of Pennsylvania. "There is a sense that, 'Well, the women who play these games are attracted to the male narratives we already put out there so why should we change?' "

That's a good question, but as the market becomes more diverse, there will almost certainly be more demands for believable female characters and better depictions of women.

"There is no marketing to women," said Wanda Meloni, president of M2 Research, a market research firm. "They are abused and affronted most of the time when they play socially. And yet the market is only growing for women and gaming."

Some companies are responding. When a female blogger complained she would stop playing Blizzard Entertainment's games like "World of Warcraft" because of the games' sexism, she heard directly from the chief executive, who said they were trying to do better.

Sarkeesian has been a controversial figure since she started "Feminist Frequency," her video Web series, after a 2012 Kickstarter campaign to raise money. Many gamers have appreciated her work, even those who don't agree with her. Others accuse her of bringing a one-note feminist critique to a genre she doesn't understand.

But she is part of a chorus of critics who say the industry should do better.

In the video that sparked the backlash, Sarkeesian eviscerated the industry, for nearly 30 minutes showing example after example of women as background decoration, "sexual playthings and the perpetual victims of male violence."

I'm not sure I agree with everything Sarkeesian says, but she has a good point when she says these video games "sanitize violence against women and make it comfortably consumable."

Sarkeesian makes all of us, gamers and newcomers, look more critically at video game content.

If we don't like what we see, we should vote with our feet and find other ways to entertain ourselves. That seems to be the only way to get the video game industry to address its casual abuse of women.